A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(March 2019) |
Sol Wisenberg | |
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Born | Solomon Louis Wisenberg June 8, 1954 |
Education | Washington University (BA) University of Texas, Austin (JD) |
Occupation | Partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough |
Known for | Deputy independent counsel of the Whitewater investigation and Clinton-Lewinsky investigation |
Solomon Louis Wisenberg (born June 8, 1954) is an American lawyer, legal analyst, and former Chief of the Financial Institution Fraud Unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas. From 1997 to 1999, he served as Associate and Deputy Independent Counsel under Kenneth W. Starr during the Whitewater Investigation & Clinton-Lewinsky Investigations. [1] Wisenberg was a frequent commentator on legal issues related to the investigation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that resulted in a finding of insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Wisenberg studied at the University of Texas Law School and clerked with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. [6] He then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in North Carolina and Texas from 1987 to 1997. In 1993, as Chief of the Financial Institution Fraud Unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, Wisenberg first chaired the Victoria Savings Association investigation and trial that resulted in the conviction of eleven individuals for defrauding the Victoria Savings Association of $200 million. [7] [8] Victoria Savings Association had been previously identified by Congress as one of the Top 100 Savings and Loan failures in the United States. [9] A history of prosecuting complex financial crimes made Wisenberg a top candidate to assist Independent Counsel Starr in the investigation of the Clinton's financial involvement with the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, and he was recruited by Starr's Office.
Wisenberg joined the Starr team in 1997 as Associate Independent Counsel to work on aspects of the Madison Guaranty Savings Investigation and in 1998 was promoted to Deputy Independent Counsel. Wisenberg was one of four Deputy Independent Counsels who took part in the federal grand jury questioning of President Bill Clinton. [10] In January 1998, at the request of Starr and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the scope of Starr's investigation was broadened to include possible obstruction of justice in Clinton v. Jones, a sexual harassment suit brought against Clinton by Paula Jones. Wisenberg led the grand jury phase of the Lewinsky Investigation and questioned Clinton during his videotaped grand jury testimony that took place on August 17, 1998. [11] [12]
Wisenberg elicited Clinton's most infamous answer during federal grand jury questioning in the Lewinsky Investigation. He asked Clinton: "[T]he statement that there was ‘no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, [between Lewinsky and] President Clinton,’ was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?" Clinton responded: "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is." [13] By mid-1998, Wisenberg and the rest of the Starr team were facing accusations of partisanship for pursuing the Lewinsky sex scandal as part of an investigation that had primarily begun as an inquiry into financial improprieties and potential corruption. [14]
The Starr Report was released on September 11, 1998 and the House of Representatives subsequently voted to impeach. Clinton was acquitted in the Senate and Wisenberg entered private practice in 1999.
Since the launch of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017, Wisenberg has made numerous media appearances on NBC, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, PBS, and in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other national publications. [15] In the absence of released or leaked information from the Mueller team, members of the media have drawn on Wisenberg's experience investigating and questioning Bill Clinton to provide insight into the procedures involved and the potential strategies the Mueller team may have been following. [16] [17] On September 19, 2017, Wisenberg's analysis of Mueller's pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort's home appeared in the New York Times. He stressed that Mueller was sending a message, saying: "They are setting a tone. It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled." [18] In May 2018, Wisenberg criticized Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani for making statements highlighting the political value of hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels with Trump's personal funds. [19] Wisenberg likened Giuliani's statements to a murder-suicide. [20]
Following the appearance of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen before the House Oversight Committee on February 27, 2019, [21] Wisenberg concluded that Cohen's testimony provided no new information about potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence agencies or crimes around payments to Stormy Daniels. [22] He did conclude that Cohen's testimony may have increased Trump's legal exposure by indicating that he has provided purposely inaccurate financial information to lending institutions and the Internal Revenue Service. [23]
Wisenberg is the primary author of White Collar Crime: Securities Fraud (Thomson Reuters Third Edition 2016). [24]
Kenneth Winston Starr was an American lawyer and judge who authored the Starr Report, which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He headed an investigation of members of the Clinton administration, known as the Whitewater controversy, from 1994 to 1998. Starr previously served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1983 to 1989 and as the U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993 during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.
The Whitewater controversy, Whitewater scandal, Whitewatergate, or simply Whitewater, was an American political controversy during the 1990s. It began with an investigation into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation. This failed business venture was incorporated in 1979 with the purpose of developing vacation properties on land along the White River near Flippin, Arkansas.
The Starr Report, officially the Referral from Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr in Conformity with the Requirement of Title 28, United States Code, Section 595(c), is a United States federal government report by Independent Counsel Ken Starr concerning his investigation of President Bill Clinton. Delivered to the United States Congress on September 9, 1998, the allegations in the report led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the five-year suspension of Clinton's law license.
Linda Rose Tripp was an American civil servant who played a prominent role in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal of 1998. Tripp's action in illegally and secretly recording Monica Lewinsky's confidential phone calls about her relationship with President Bill Clinton caused a sensation with their links to the earlier Clinton v. Jones lawsuit and with the disclosing of intimate details. Tripp claimed that her motives were purely patriotic, and she avoided a wiretap charge by agreeing to hand over the tapes.
Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, was impeached by the United States House of Representatives of the 105th United States Congress on December 19, 1998, for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The House adopted two articles of impeachment against Clinton, with the specific charges against Clinton being lying under oath and obstruction of justice. Two other articles had been considered but were rejected by the House vote.
Kathleen Willey is a former White House volunteer aide who, on March 15, 1998, alleged on the TV news program 60 Minutes that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her on November 29, 1993, during his first term as President. She had been subpoenaed to testify in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.
Victoria Ann Toensing is an American attorney, Republican Party operative and with her husband, Joseph diGenova, a partner in the Washington law firm diGenova & Toensing. Toensing and diGenova frequently appeared on Fox News and Fox Business channels, until diGenova used a November 2019 appearance to spread conspiracy theories about George Soros, leading to widespread calls for him to be banned from the network. In 2019, Toensing and diGenova began representing Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash in his efforts to block extradition to the United States under a federal indictment and became embroiled in the Trump–Ukraine scandal. The couple has worked with Rudy Giuliani in support of President Donald Trump beginning in 2018, and was named to join a legal team led by Giuliani to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election in which Trump was defeated.
The Office of Special Counsel was an office of the United States Department of Justice established by provisions in the Ethics in Government Act that expired in 1999. The provisions were replaced by Department of Justice regulation 28 CFR Part 600, which created the successor office of special counsel. The current regulations were drafted by former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal.
Norma Holloway Johnson, born Normalie Loyce Holloway, was a former United States district judge who served as the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and was the first African-American woman in U.S. history to serve as chief judge of a United States district court. Notably, Johnson presided over the grand jury investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Michael Dean Cohen is an American former lawyer who served as an attorney for former United States president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018. Cohen served as vice president of the Trump Organization and personal counsel to Trump, often being described as his fixer. Cohen served as co-president of Trump Entertainment and was a board member of the Eric Trump Foundation, a children's health charity. From 2017 to 2018, Cohen was deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates. The investigation was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. It was also called the Russia investigation, the Mueller probe, and the Mueller investigation. The Mueller investigation culminated with the Mueller report, which concluded that though the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference and expected to benefit from it, there was insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy to charge members of the campaign. The report did not reach a conclusion about possible obstruction of justice by Trump, citing a Justice Department guideline that prohibits the federal indictment of a sitting president. The investigation resulted in charges against 34 individuals and 3 companies, 8 guilty pleas, and a conviction at trial.
The 2017-2019 Special Counsel investigation involved multiple legal teams, specifically the attorneys, supervised by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, taking part in the investigation; the team representing President Trump in his personal capacity; and the team representing the White House as an institution separate from the President.
Reactions to the Special Counsel investigation of any Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election have been widely varied and have evolved over time. An initial period of bipartisan support and praise for the selection of former FBI director Robert Mueller to lead the Special Counsel investigation gave way to some degree of partisan division over the scope of the investigation, the composition of the investigative teams, and its findings and conclusions.
This is a timeline of events in the first half of 2019 related to investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, both before and after July 2016, until November 8, 2016, the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and followed by the second half of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
The Mueller report, officially titled Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, is the official report documenting the findings and conclusions of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States presidential election, allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, and allegations of obstruction of justice. The report was submitted to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019, and a redacted version of the 448-page report was publicly released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on April 18, 2019. It is divided into two volumes. The redactions from the report and its supporting material were placed under a temporary "protective assertion" of executive privilege by then-President Trump on May 8, 2019, preventing the material from being passed to Congress, despite earlier reassurance by Barr that Trump would not exert privilege.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2018 related to the investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, and the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, and the first half of 2018, but precedes that of the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021. These events are related to, but distinct from, Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections.
The impeachment inquiry against Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, was initiated by a vote of the United States House of Representatives on October 8, 1998, roughly a month after the release of the Starr Report.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2019 related to the investigations into the myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, and the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and the first half of 2019, but precedes that of 2020 and 2021.
The Mueller special counsel investigation was started by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was serving as Acting Attorney General due to the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He authorized Robert Mueller to investigate and prosecute "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump", as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation" and any other matters within the scope of 28 CFR 600.4 – Jurisdiction.
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